


Fragmentary

by DawningStar



Category: Tron (1982), Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 05:32:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1333906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawningStar/pseuds/DawningStar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is forbidden to remember that she loved Tron, but no one has ordered her not to dream of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragmentary

He is here, the one she knows and has always loved. She reaches to bridge the distance. He whispers a name that might have belonged to her. She smiles at the sight of his face, so familiar, and says, “Tron—” 

But he flinches violently and turns away, vanishing from fingers that try to hold him. She thinks she sees him shape the words “I’m sorry,” but he is gone and she falls too. 

Memory is forbidden. Memory is dangerous. If Clu looks (and Clu always looks) it is not her, it is the other who will mourn. She cannot bear that.

She found long ago how to hold the precious deadly memories with the loosest grip, how to let them fall when choking golden strands wrap around her. 

For a moment in waking the Portal Supervisor wonders why she grieves. 

Then there is work to do. 

 

He is here, the one she loves, the one she doesn’t know. She comes to him flying, arms outstretched, and says “Rinzler—” 

Something snarls within him, grief and pain and a choking defeat, and he flees into the dark. She follows, trembling at the echo of the nightmare that surrounds them both, but there are no lights and no trail. Even the sound of his grief fades until she is nowhere at all. 

For a moment she remembers that she is dreaming. A connection forged in times long gone still reaches across the Administrator’s system, unworthy of his notice. She and one she loved had tested it together and found it useless for any of its intended purposes. No conscious transmissions had ever made it across ungarbled. 

(Does he know that she loves him, wherever he hides? Would it be safer if he forgot?)

The sense of a mutual defragment period had been an interesting side effect of no practical use, too jumbled to remember in any detail afterward, no way even to prove it had been more than a similar theme to their unconscious processing. They’d kept the link installed for later experimentation, then grown much too busy to spare the time. 

(She regrets that now, down in the hidden places where she scrapes out the room for regret that isn’t quite loyal. Their greatest crime was the failure to support Clu, the upper layer whispers back.)

But she cannot find him and the dream cannot hold her alone. She is falling into darkness, falling…

Is it she who shatters on the chains of consciousness, or the dream? Memory and self fracture at once and nothing of her is permitted to matter. 

When she wakes she remembers only her duty. 

 

He is here, the one she came to find. She catches his hands firmly in hers. “I love you,” she tells him. When he says a name that might be hers, she doesn’t try to answer; she presses her lips against the glow under his chin instead and waits for his helmet to drop. 

A shudder grips him. He steps back, but doesn’t break her gentle hold. 

“It’s only a dream,” she thinks to say, because it is and it isn’t but she hopes he might accept her comfort even if he can’t forgive her. “But I’m here. Are you angry with me?” 

She finds it hard to remember any of the reasons why he might be, here where memories flicker and are gone. Something happened to make him snarl in such anguish... 

He freezes under her touch for a long moment. Shakes his head once. 

Well, good. She lets the pained thought slip into silence and lifts his hands to her lips, whispering into them. “Let me stay, then.” 

A sudden flinch at her words. He moves back, out of reach. But he doesn’t run yet, and she doesn’t move closer out of worry that he might. She settles to the ground instead—there is a soft codebase there, glowing gently blue. 

She watches him, and after a moment he gives a tiny jerk of a nod. So she stays, smiling, and feels his eyes on her until the joined dream shatters. 

 

He is here and he does not turn away, even when a shift in the fragments of memory leaves his armor as blue as her trailing robe and he winces at the change. She says “I love you,” and he returns the words in a low pained tone. 

Tension and guilt weigh visibly heavy on his curled shoulders. He only meets her gaze for scant wary moments. An armored hand half-extends toward her, and whether he intended that or not she takes it as a request. Her fingers fit into his with the peace of missing code made whole. He must feel that too, or his hand would not close so easily around hers. 

Bold with success, she tugs on his other hand, drawing near enough that she can pull it to her waist. She suspects she could float close enough to touch her lips to his without using his shoulder for leverage, but this is better. 

“You’re not safe with me,” he mutters against her mouth. “Not anymore.”

She doesn’t let him retreat from the gentle kiss. “I am not safe with anyone.” Not in dreams and not, she suspects, in her waking cycles either, or her dreams would be less desperate. “Let us both have this much.” 

The dream breaks around them too soon. They cling to each other even as their separate chains bind them again. Waking is a sharp pang. 

 

He is here waiting for her. “I love you,” she says, and neither of them bother with names because they are busy trading kisses and the comfort of warm touch. 

His hands are wide and welcome on her back, where there is no disk. The intricate circuitry that covers him is old, old and beloved and familiar, until he flinches and points of orange light stand out sharp against black armor. “If this were real you wouldn’t,” he tells her. “But I miss you.” 

That seems wrong but none of the things she could say to correct it have followed her to this dream. She leaves her arms around his neck, unwilling to let him go. “The love is real.” She isn’t quite. “I’ll prove it to you as many times as you need.” 

Whether she finds him in dream or in nightmare and whether she knows him or not she is always certain that their love is intact. Despite all obstacles between. 

He pulls her close against him and bends his head over hers as if in silent apology for all the things that should be equally real and are not. She knows he doesn’t believe her, but at least he doesn’t argue. The moments of shared dream are too short and too rare to waste. 

When she wakes the memories cannot follow, but the warmth does. 

 

(Inspired by [this beautiful picture](http://whatistigerbalm.deviantart.com/art/Tron-and-Yori-433678377).)


End file.
